MFProblemA1

Version 1

Democracy is just a mere word in our system, we want to involve people in the political decisions that are made and that influence their life. We are for more equity in the economical system with something like basic income. We want to emphasize and support collaborative and sharing behaviours by promoting FOSS technologies and adapt copyright and patent laws.

Version 2

Digital Age Revolution Misunderstanding from the «common folks» and Miss use of Communication and Information Technology based society if misleaded by a corporate or goverment hierarchy.

Version 3

Politics are too influenced by large corporations that push laws and treaties to their advantage, create private Courts and dominate the lected persons..

Version 4

Let us face it. Our democracy has its merits, but we need to admit it is currently so out-dated that most people would even prefer a technocratic system in a quick reaction. It would be more efficient and would avoid all these discussions between the main powers that change little for most people in the street. Our representative democracy is still based on the particratic system of ages ago and we have never questioned thoroughly how modern technology can change it to something more efficient. Technology made the possibilities to communicate with each other so much more enhanced. We could think of systems that come with better, more objective information gathered together by different kinds of people. This would allow citizens to decide better than politicians do now and also allow them to vote directly based on that. (and if they would not be interested to vote, they could delegate it to someone else they trust, which can vary as opposed to the representative democracy now) Pia Mancini of DemocracyOS put it this way: "We are 21st century citizens doing our best to interact with 19th century designed institutions that are based on an information technology of the 15th century. It's time we start asking: What is democracy for the internet era?" As said before, a technocracy is often quickly uttered as a solution but a technocracy has its problems: It might be correct that it would work better than the current system, but democracy entails that everybody can be involved and we had reasons to go for a democracy: those technocrats can get corrupted also and don't necessarily interpret all the right aspects. Policy is not a pure number question.

Politicians use the centralized media (tv, newspapers, …) to exercise their powers and as such they become media figures that defend their party's old ideas, more bringing the perception than what is really going to happen. Although some politicians use social media to interact with citizens, little is reflected into actual policy and won't be able to change something fundamentally. The result is that only a small number of people takes interest in politics. It is important in a society that ideas can grow bottom-up and for that, if there are new ideas, they should be worked out into good politics quite fast. Nowadays, when politicians think about new technology, it takes ages before they can put it e.g. into law and then technology is already 5 steps ahead. Most people had a good education and politicians don't necessarily have a better education or experience than citizens. So, why not let everyone participate to their full extent if they want to? Or let them help decide on the things they know something about and can be really involved into.

The particratic system is also giving us unnecessary fear and uncertainty. Politicians want us all to have a job, otherwise you will be punished, but on the other hand, the unions set up quite some rules to make our jobs bearable, which makes the laws far too complex which makes it difficult for our employers. The result is that we are desperately creating jobs in government, making it overly inefficient. Meanwhile, politicians and unions jam the situation that much that one of the consequences is that foreign investments decrease and finding capital to boost innovative start-ups is difficult. At the same time, we have a treasure on research and development at our universities. The economic problem in our country is not jobs, but non-subsidized jobs or at least an efficient government supporting those private sector jobs. Interesting jobs instead of bull shit jobs.

Meanwhile, politicians don't seem to see they are part of the problem. The liberals keep on saying that we need to diminish the number of people in government, but history shows the opposite trend despite the continuous communication in the media that there is a problem which they are going to solve every time, but somehow they could not despite years of government participation. Because politicians often want to participate in politics at all cost, the results for the citizens are actually bad. They let live inefficient measures: 11 billion R&D subsidies to companies without necessity for collaboration between universities and companies, government expenditure rising to 58% of GDP while inefficient, foreign investments declining while selling them state property at a too low price, our legislation still even becoming more complex than before. On the left side: 15% of the population is still living beneath the poverty threshold.

While appearing in the media, politicians want to be an authority to confirm their power, but the problem is it has no base anymore. While only some decades ago, they could be the wise men that know it better and would wisely decide for us, that idea is gone. Therefore they use economic numbers or problems with the security of the country to justify their actions. But a democracy is not only about some numbers they interpreted their way, it is about how to put the right numbers together with all of us. And it is not because this is complicated that we should try to go back to old conservative ideas. Together we can decide what is best for everyone.

This whole system has a psychological factor that should not be underestimated too. People need authorities in their life, but it should come from a good source, not some unions and politicians fighting over control, but every citizen thinking about the best ideas to make our lives the best for everyone. The current system makes us live in fear and makes us compare each other with raw numbers which tell little about what is really good for us. A lot of people have the fear to lose their job or are stuck in a social net. And we even think this kind of stress is good to perform better. Scientific experiments however show that this stress is bad for us, but somehow we are made to believe it is necessary, while it is counterproductive, certainly for the creative and intelligent work which is driving our economy today. This system is also not only inefficient, it is also pervert: 15% of our population is still living below the poverty threshold. While it is clear there are plenty of resources and technical possibilities to make everyone happy and out of fear. Giving enough money to that 15% is not making some other part of the population poorer or the economy suddenly broken. Giving money to the poor is even good for economy.

The democratic deficit is not only restricted to the politicians. Corporations try to lobby for the legislation they want with members of the parliament. With the VW emission scandal you can wonder why this happened at that level. We still wonder why certain appliances get broke so fast these days. Banks get out of control. A loan is not backed by money on savings accounts in a bank. So, the entire discussion about which interest rate is the valid one, is decided by central banks and one bank, which is only under its own control. There is a clear democratic deficit brought on by banks themselves. The citizens end up taking the risks instead of the banks for their policies. Also, in Belgium in particular, our legislation is that outdated and amended each time, that rich people can win whichever fight in court because they have the best lawyers. All this is also not helping to diminish the rise of economic inequality, where an efficient government and innovations possible by anyone would be most helpful. We have a society with a lot of people struggling for resources instead of opening up their minds and creativity. And a policy that can not advance, so keeping us struggling instead of generating the necessary surpluses which people can then invest in something they care about. Whoever follows the latest trends in technology, will see that it is not the technology itself causing the disruption but how humans decide to use that technology. If the democracy can evolve with it, the disruption can be worth a lot more, respecting individuals. We can have this Silicon Valley for everyone's luck in Europe/Belgium, but the politics need to follow suit. We need to update democracy to modern times!

Version 5

De machtssystemen die de burgers tot zombies willen maken, de corrupte overheids,bancaire en andere handelssystemen